SCVMM 2008 R2 guide (Part 3)

by Marin Franković on 12 April, 2012

This is a long due post and it was supposed to be written back in 2009., but due to some technical and personal issues was simply forgotten. Although SCVMM 2012 is RTM at this time, lots of people are still using 2008 R2 and will not migrate to new version soon. So this is for all of you that where waiting for final part of this series. Thanks for reading!

Before creating virtual machines it is good to devise a plan and to create templates that will assist you and speed up the process of VM creating. We can create several different profiles and templates that can be used later on in creating new VM.

Hardware profiles

Hardware profiles define VM settings such as amount of memory, number of processors and connected devices (virtual DVDs and network adapters). Hardware profiles can be used later on in the process of creating new VM template. To create hardware profile select Library tab and then select Profiles node. In the Actions pane you can select “New hardware profile”. In this example I have created hardware profile HW1 and modified some of its settings. Something to note; If you will be using this hardware profile on VMs that will be migrated to different hosts (live or quick migration), and Hyper-V hosts do not have the same hardware, be sure to select option “Allow migration to a VM host with different processor” in Processor settings.

Guest OS profile

Guest OS profiles are created in the same place as hardware profiles. Within guest OS profile we can define settings such as computer identity information, admin password, product key, time zone and so on. Guest OS profile can also be used during the process of VM template creation. It is very useful to use scripts with guest OS profile that can be utilized as a part of a sysprep process. Answer files can be used to create unattended setups of operating systems (Windows XP and newer). We can also add commands that will be run once for the first time user logs on the VM.

Virtual Machine templates

Now that we have created hardware and guest OS template (you can create as many as you need), we can proceed on creating VM template.

From the Library admin console on the Actions pane select “New template” option which will start new VM template wizard. First thing we have to select source for the new template. It can be existing template od virtual disk or it can be existing virtual machine that is already deployed on the host server. We will select existing VHD (select Browse).

I will be selecting one of the pre created VHDs (Blank Disk – Large) but you can create your own VHDs in a library or use stored VM VHDs.

Now we have to name template and put some descriptive text since it is very likely that you will have more than one. Be sure to describe it as clear and concise as possible.

Now we can select our preconfigured hardware and guest OS profiles.

Once that is done we are presented with final confirmation screen. One cool thing to notice that will be and already is implemented in all System Center products is “View Script” button. If you click it it will create PowerShell script of all the actions that we did in a wizard. This script then can be reused whenever we need it. It can also be stored in a Library. This is the example script that was created when I used the wizard.

Create virtual machine from template

This is the easiest part now. Select “New virtual machine” form Actions pane and wizard will present you with option to create it from existing VM, template, VHD or to create new VM with blank disk. Select first radio button and click browse. As you can see, we are presented with our templates and other Library resources. I will select template that we created and click OK.

Name the virtual machine, select owner and add some description to it. You can confirm all hardware and guest OS profile setting and proceed to placement options (host or library). After selecting host or library for the VM to be placed review final settings and create your VM.

That is it for this series on VM 2008 R2. I encourage you to try 2012 version and to test its great new features and capabilities.